Beauty poems
/ page 172 of 313 /
A Map of the Western Part of the County of Essex in England
© Denise Levertov
Something forgotten for twenty years: though my fathers
and mothers came from Cordova and Vitepsk and Caernarvon,
Soon, O Ianthe! Life is O'er
© Heather Fuller
Soon, O Ianthe! life is oer,
And sooner beautys heavenly smile:
Grant only (and I ask no more),
Let love remain that little while.
My Lifes Delight
© Thomas Campion
Come, O come, my lifes delight,
Let me not in languor pine!
Love loves no delay; thy sight,
The more enjoyed, the more divine:
O come, and take from me
The pain of being deprived of thee!
Mariana in the South
© Alfred Tennyson
With one black shadow at its feet,
The house thro' all the level shines,
The Past
© Henry Timrod
To-days most trivial act may hold the seed
Of future fruitfulness, or future dearth;
Oh, cherish always every word and deed!
The simplest record of thyself hath worth.
Wyatt Resteth Here
© Henry Howard
Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest;
Whose heavenly gifts increased by disdain,
And virtue sank the deeper in his breast;
Such profit he of envy could obtain.
In Beauty Bright
© Gerald Stern
In beauty-bright and such it was like Blake’s
lily and though an angel he looked absurd
Amoretti LXII: "The weary yeare his race now having run"
© Edmund Spenser
The weary yeare his race now having run,
The new begins his compast course anew:
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
© André Breton
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
Inscription for a Gravestone
© Robinson Jeffers
I am not dead, I have only become inhuman:
That is to say,
Yarrow Revisited
© André Breton
The gallant Youth, who may have gained,
Or seeks, a "winsome Marrow,"
They Clapped
© Nikki Giovanni
they clapped when they took off
for home despite the dead
dream they saw a free future
Buick
© Ishmael Reed
As a sloop with a sweep of immaculate wing on her delicate spine
And a keel as steel as a root that holds in the sea as she leans,
Leaning and laughing, my warm-hearted beauty, you ride, you ride,
You tack on the curves with parabola speed and a kiss of goodbye,
Like a thoroughbred sloop, my new high-spirited spirit, my kiss.
from Totem Poem [In the yellow time of pollen]
© Luke Davies
In the yellow time of pollen, in the blue time of lilacs,
in the green that would balance on the wide green world,
Nancy Jane
© Charles Simic
A dark little country store full of gravedigger’s
children buying candy.
(That’s how we looked that night.)
The Lady’s Dressing Room
© Jonathan Swift
Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
from First Book of Odes: 13. Fearful Symmetry
© Ted Hughes
Muzzle and jowl and beastly brow,
bilious glaring eyes, tufted ears,
recidivous criminality in the slouch,
—This is not the latest absconding bankrupt
but a ‘beautiful’ tiger imported at great expense from
Kuala Lumpur.
"Go, lovely Rose"
© Edmund Waller
Go, lovely Rose
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
